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Monday, October 22, 2012

"From the heart of the breathtaking fragrance Liu, Guerlain takes us on a refined, mysterious journey to the golden mists of Shanghai with the Guerlain Liu Christmas Makeup collection.
A limited edition collection that focuses upon the extreme splendour of tapered eyes, glistening skin and a blood red mouth; a heroine whose beauty is noble and bewitching.
From her incarnation in the roaring twenties, Liu is reinvented for the 21st century, even more radiant than the original but still with the same precious rituals, extreme femininity and sense of detail".

Guerlain continues to use its illustrious archives for coming up with dreamy names to baptize their latest makeup products, from their -by now- customary Christmas loose powders in gorgeous bottles with bulb atomizers (see last years' Vol de Nuit shimmer powder) to their Rouge Automatique lipsticks in all the colors of the rainbow.

The star product of the Guerlain 2012Christmas collection is the show-stopping Liu loose powder in the sublime deco bottle above ($88.00) Drawing its inspiration from Jacques Guerlain's iconic Liu perfume from the 1920s [ed.note: itself inspired by Puccini's opera Turandot] this precious beauty ritual softly illuminates the body with a mysterious, refined and festive air. "The black lacquered bottle is a talisman all of its own. Styled in the image of the original Liu perfume bottle, which in turn was inspired by traditional Japanese tea trays, this legendary fragrance is transformed into a desirable objet d'art".

10 comments:

Good point (and it would have been rather lovely, wouldn't it) but I suppose they're concerned whether it would create a loss of "image"/exclusivity for their Eau de Parfum Liu in the Parisiennes edition. (Sort of the same reason that made them withdraw the Vetiver pour Elle from duty-frees...).

Makes business sense? Probably. Do we have to like it? Not necessarily. So thanks for mentioning it! I hope people at Guerlain see this kind of comments and maybe reconsider at some point.

Well it turns out that Turandot (the Puccini opera from which the name Liu is taken) was banned in China for a long time because it was thought to portray the Chinese badly.(though it seems the tale was meant to have been set in Central Asia/Persia) - Just to add another layer to it all!

it's rather funny, as you say, especially since the French have had their own intermixed population for much much longer than other European countries thanks to their colonialist past.

On the contrary here for instance (to draw but one example), back 25 or 30 years ago seeing someone from another race or ethnicity was as rare as seeing the tail of meteorite crossing the sky and as impressive! (I distinctly remember being indelibly impressed by a statuesque black lady by the name of Yvette who was an athlete and a model appearing on TV as a kid; she had created the impression that all black people were as queenly as she was)

In the end, I think that using cliches is appealing to a gut instinct created through repeated exposure to a "claim". It usually doesn't really make sense logically and it can be infuriating (even if complimentary) to the races/ethnicities involved, but it's used for its instant recognizability by the companies and the advertising machine. There you have it...

I would have jumped with joy for a saner priced (even if LE) Liu for wider distribution. But I don't think it's probable, in all honesty.

Oh, the makeup is usually quite good (stellar sometimes) and some of the skincare is good as well (the L'Or serum is really great), though my experience with the latter segment isn't adequate by any stretch.

obviously the reference is so well known (and revered artistically and visually) that they're willing to bypass that "technicality"?I'm not surprised that the Chinese had banned it. High art can be controversial and create tensions as well. ;-)

Elena Vosnaki is executive editor of Fragrantica.gr, the leader in fragrance information in Greek, as well as a senior editor for the top english-speaking Fragrantica.com webzine.

Vosnaki has been Fragrance Expert on About.com and the Perfume History Curator of the Be Open Foundation exhibitionThe Garden of Wonders, A Journey in Scents in Milan. Her writing has been twice shortlisted in the FIFI Editorial Excellence Awards and is extensively quoted by authors. She is an evaluating expert on Osmoz.com.

Perfume Shrine is an award winning blog of 1000s of fragrance reviews (modern, niche, classic, vintage), articles on perfume history and aroma materials, comparisons of scents, interviews with perfumers & the fragrance industry, perfume shopping as well as scented travel memoirs, fine cuisine, tips on building a fragrance wardrobe and musings about the pleasures of the senses.